Most cancers lack effective markers to detect disease early, to identify high risk patients (prognostic signatures), and to predict optimal treatment strategy (predictive signatures). The main challenge is learning from and using the enormous amounts of complex, molecular data from tumor samples. Many methods have been introduced to generate prognostic and predictive signatures from these data, but we lack systematic approaches to find all useful signatures, and to select the best one.

Counter intuitively, good signatures comprise not only the most
differential markers. Identifying these less differential markers - "the best supporting actors" - calls for novel, integrative approaches as current statistical and machine learning methods fail in this task.

To power this research, we rely on World Community Grid volunteers who
donate their computers' spare capacity to carry out this extensive
analysis. Finding all clinically useful markers would require processing thousands of patient samples and testing an astronomical number of marker combinations, which is not feasible even on World Community Grid.

We developed approaches called heuristics to reduce the search space,
enabling us to tackle this challenge. However, the success of MCM project is only enabled by World Community Grid with the computing resources donated by volunteers around the world.

Considering the diversity of analyses and data, we will have large
variation in runtimes and work unit duration. We will keep you updated on the progress and discoveries, and would be happy to answer any questions you may have about the project.

We hope you will find our project interesting, and support its goals. With your participation, we will form the largest "cancer research team" in the world

We launched the Mapping Cancer Markers project this week and accelerated the first batch so that we could check the results sooner for any anomalies. Unfortunately, we found a limitation with the default random number generator being used for the project. The increased volume of results revealed some duplication of computation due to this. That is, the results computed are valid and correct, but in some cases they are duplicated instead of exploring new regions of the search space. For this reason, we are temporarily pausing the project and making some code changes to improve the random number generator usage. We will run a brief beta test for this change and if all looks good, will soon (in a few days) resume the project at full speed. The nature of research is that it often contains unexpected surprises and this is just one of them. Members will receive the normal credits for the work already performed. Thank you for your contributions and support of the project and more importantly thank you for your patience with this.

Race for the bronze? branjo already has the silver! _________________[img]http://stats.free-dc.org/cpidtagb.php?cpid=6533a276b3a1dde393be350eb3cfda70&theme=16&cols=5/.png[/img]
[img]http://stats.free-dc.org/badgesbanner.php?cpid=6533a276b3a1dde393be350eb3cfda70/.png[/img]

That is better than "I'm against it - what is it?" _________________[img]http://stats.free-dc.org/cpidtagb.php?cpid=6533a276b3a1dde393be350eb3cfda70&theme=16&cols=5/.png[/img]
[img]http://stats.free-dc.org/badgesbanner.php?cpid=6533a276b3a1dde393be350eb3cfda70/.png[/img]